“Tonight has just been a warning!” Inspector Yang bellowed. “I want you to think good and hard. Are you going to talk or aren’t you? If you talk, your previous crimes will be forgiven. If you don’t, then the worst is yet to come.” He picked up his prosthetic limb, put away his pipe, and holstered his pistol, then ordered the militiamen to guard us well before turning and hobbling out the door in the company of his bodyguards, creaking with each step.
The militiamen bolted the door and hunkered down by the wall to smoke, their rifles cradled in their arms. We huddled up next to Mother, whimpering and unable to say a word. She stroked our heads with her puffy hand. Sima Ting was moaning from the pain.
“Hey,” one of the militiamen said, “tell him what he wants to know. Inspector Yang can make a stone statue confess. How many days do you think your flesh-and-blood bodies can hold out? You’ll be lucky to make it past tomorrow.”
One of the others said, “If Sima Ku is the man they say he is, he should give himself up. These days he can hide in the green curtain of crops. But come winter, he’ll be out in the open.”
“That son-in-law of yours is one strange tiger. Late last month, a squad of police had him surrounded in a patch of reeds at White Horse Lake, but he got away and managed to kill seven or eight pursuers with one burst of his machine gun. Even the squad leader was wounded in the leg.”
The militiamen seemed to be hinting at something, I wasn’t sure what. But they had let slip news about Sima Ku: after showing himself at the brick kiln, he had disappeared like a pebble in the ocean. We’d wanted him to fly high and far, but he’d stayed close to Northeast Gaomi, raising chaos and bringing us nothing but trouble. White Horse Lake was just south of Two County Hamlet, no more than three or four miles from Dalan.
8
At noon the next day, Pandi rode up from the county seat. Filled with anger, she was intent on making the district officials pay for what they’d done. But she had calmed down by the time she walked out of the office of the district chief, who came with her to see us. Not having seen her for six months, we didn’t know what she was doing at county headquarters. She’d lost a lot of weight, but the dried milk stains on her blouse showed that she was nursing. We glared at her. “Pandi,” Mother asked, “what have we done wrong?” Pandi looked at the district chief, who was staring out the window. As her eyes filled up with tears, she said, “Mother … be patient… trust the government… the government would never hurt the innocent…”
At the same time that Pandi was trying awkwardly to console us, out in the Scholar Ding family graveyard in the dense pine grove beyond White Horse Lake, Cui Fengxian, a widow from Sandy Mouth Village, was rhythmically pounding the tombstone over the grave of Scholar Ding, with its carved commendation for his heroic deeds. The crisp sounds merged with the du-du-du of a woodpecker at work on a tree. The fanlike white tail feathers of a gray magpie slipped through the sky above the trees. After pounding on the marker for a while, Cui Fengxian sat before the altar to wait. Her face was powdered, her clothes neat and clean; a covered bamboo basket hung from her arm, all of which gave her the appearance of a newly married young woman on a trip to her parents’ home. Sima Ku stepped out from behind the grave marker, causing her to jump back in fright. “You damned ghost!” she cursed. “You scared me half to death.” “Since when is a fox spirit like you afraid of ghosts?” “So that’s how it is,” she said, “still as sharp-tongued as ever.” “What do you mean, that’s how it is? Everything is wonderful, never better.” He added, “Those local turtle-spawn bastards think they’ll capture me, do they? Ha ha, dream on!” He patted the automatic rifle draped across his chest, the chrome-plated German Mauser in his belt, and the Browning pistol in its holster. “My mother-in-law wants me to leave Northeast Gaomi. Why would I want to do that? This is my home, the place where my ancestors are buried. Fm intimate with every blade of grass, every tree and mountain and river. This is where I get my enjoyment, and it also has a flaming fox spirit like you, so, I ask you, why would I want to run away?” Off in the reedy marshes a startled flock of wild ducks took to the air, and Cui Fengxian reached out and clapped her hand over Sima Ku’s mouth. He wrenched her hand away and said, “Nothing to worry about. I've taught the Eighth Route Army a lesson over there. Those ducks were frightened off by vultures.” Cui dragged him farther back into the graveyard, where she said, “I’ve got important news for you.”
They threaded their way through a thicket of brambles on their way into a large vault. “Aiya!” Cui Fengxian yelped as a bramble pricked her finger. Sima Ku slipped his machine gun over his head and lit a lantern, then reached back and grabbed her hand. “Did it break the skin?” he asked. “Let me see.” “It’s fine,” she replied as she tried to pull her hand back. But he’d already stuck the finger in his mouth and was sucking hard. She moaned. “You’re a damned vampire.” Sima Ku spat her finger out, covered her mouth with his, and grabbed hold of her breasts with his large, coarse hands. She writhed passionately and let her basket fall to the ground, sending brown eggs rolling around on the brick floor. Sima Ku picked her up and laid her on top of the broad crypt cover …
Sima Ku lay naked atop the crypt cover, his eyes half closed as he licked the tips of his dirty yellow mustache, which hadn’t been trimmed for a long time. Cui Fengxian was massaging the large knuckles of his hand with her soft fingers. All of a sudden, she laid her burning face against his bony chest, which had the smell of a wild animal, and began to bite him. “You’re a demon,” she said, a note of hopelessness in her voice. “You never come to me when things are going well, but as soon as you’re in trouble, you come and wrap your tentacles around me … I know that any woman who gets tangled up with you is in for a bad time. But I can’t control myself. You wag your tail, and I run after you like some bitch … tell me, you demon, what evil power do you have that makes women follow you, even when they know you’re leading them into a pit of fire, one they’ll jump into with their eyes wide open?”
Sima Ku smiled even though her comment had saddened him. He took her hand and pressed it against his chest, where she could feel the strength of his heartbeat. “You have to believe in this, my heart, my true heart. I give my heart to women.”
Cui Fengxian shook her head. “You only have one heart. How can you give it to different women at the same time?”
“However many I give it to, it’s still genuine. And also this,” he said with a lecherous laugh as he moved her hand down his body. Cui Fengxian wrenched her hand free and pinched him on the lips. “What am I going to do with a monster like you? Even when you’re chased to the point where you have to sleep in your grave, you’ve still got time to play your silly games!”
With a laugh, Sima Ku said, “The harder they try, the more I feel like playing. Women are true treasures, treasures among treasures, more precious than anything.” He reached out for her breasts again.
“You lecher,” she said, “that’s enough. Something has happened at your house.” “What?” he asked as he continued fondling her. “They’ve taken them all into custody — your mother-in-law, your eldest and youngest sisters-in-law, plus your son, your little brother-in-law, the daughters of your eldest and fifth sisters-in-law, and your older brother. They have them locked up in the family compound. They string them up from the rafters nightly and beat them with whips and clubs … it breaks your heart, and I don’t think they’ll be able to hold out more than another day.”
Sima Ku’s hands froze in front of Cui Fengxian’s chest. He jumped down off the crypt cover, picked up his automatic rifle, and bent down to scramble out of the vault. Cui Fengxian wrapped her arms around him and pleaded, “Don’t go. You’re just asking to be killed.”
Once he’d calmed down, he sat beside a coffin and bolted down one of the boiled eggs. Sunlight filtering in through the brambles fell on his puffy cheek and the gray temple hair. The egg yolk caught in his throat; he coughed, and his face began to turn purple. Cui Fengxian thumped him on the back and
massaged his neck until the food finally slipped down his gullet. Her face was bathed in sweat. “You frightened me half to death!” she said breathlessly as two large tears dropped onto Sima Ku’s cheek and rolled down. He sprang to his feet, his head nearly hitting the vault ceiling, as flames of anger seemed to leap from his eyes. “You sons of bitches, FU flay the skin off your bones!”
“Please don’t go,” Cui Fengxian pleaded as she wrapped her arms around him. “Yang the Cripple has set a trap for you. Even a longhaired old woman like me can see what he’s up to. Use your head. By storming in there alone, you’ll fall right into his trap.”
“So what should I do?”
“Heed the words of your mother-in-law and get as far away from here as possible. Fll go with you if I won’t be a burden, even if I wear out the soles of my feet.”
Sima Ku took her hand and said emotionally, “I’m a lucky man to have met so many good women, each of them willing to throw in her lot with me, heart and soul. What else could a man ask for in this life? But I can’t bring any more harm to you. You go now, Fengxian, and don’t come looking for me anymore. Don’t be sad when you hear that Fm dead. I've had a good life …”
With tears in her eyes, she nodded and removed an ox-horn comb from her head, with which she lovingly combed Sima Ku’s tangled, gray-specked hair, removing bits of grass, broken snail shells, and tiny bugs. She kissed his forehead wetly and said in a calm voice, “I’ll wait for you,” before picking up her basket and crawling out of the vault. Parting the brambles as she went, she left the graveyard. Sima Ku sat there without moving until long after she’d disappeared from view, his eyes fixed on the sunlit, gently swaying brambles.
The following morning, Sima Ku crawled out of the vault, leaving his weapons behind, and walked over to White Horse Lake, where he took a bath. Then, like a man out on a nature stroll, he walked around the lake, looking here and there, striking up a conversation with birds in the reeds one minute and racing with roadside rabbits the next. He walked along the edge of the marshy land, stopping every few minutes to pick red and white wildflowers, which he held up to his nose and breathed in their fragrance. He then made a wide sweep around the pastureland, where he looked off into the distance at Reclining Ox Mountain, which was gilded in the rays of the setting sun. As he was crossing the footbridge over the Black Water River, he jumped up and down, as if trying to gauge how sturdy it was. It swayed and moaned. Feeling mischievous, he opened his pants and exposed himself, then looked down and liked what he saw; he let loose a stream of steaming urine into the river. As it hit the water with loud, rhythmic splashes, he howled: Ah — ah — ah ya ya — the sound soaring over the vast wilderness and circling back to him. Over on the riverbank, a crosseyed little shepherd cracked his whip, which grabbed Sima Ku’s attention. He looked down at the boy, who returned his look, and as they held each other’s gaze, they both began to laugh. “I know who you are, boy,” Sima Ku said with a giggle. “Your legs are made of pear wood, your arms are made of apricot wood, and your ma and I made your little pecker with a mud clod!” Angered by the comment, the boy cursed, “Fuck your old lady!” This vile curse threw Sima Ku’s heart into turmoil; his eyes moistened as he sighed deeply. The shepherd cracked his whip again to drive his goats into the sunset. He cast a long shadow as he sang in his high-pitched childish voice: “In 1937, the Japs came to the plains. First they took the Marco Polo Bridge, then the Shanhai Pass. They built a railway all the way to our Jinan city. The Japs they fired big cannons, but the Eighth Route soldier cocked his rifle, took aim, and — crack! Down went a Jap officer, his legs stretched out as his soul flew into the sky …” Even before the song ended, hot tears spilled out of Sima Ku’s eyes. Holding his burning face in his hands, he squatted down on the stone bridge …
Afterward, he washed his tear-streaked face in the river, brushed the dirt from his clothes, and walked slowly along the dike, which was overgrown with garish flowers. As dusk grew deeper, the birds’ calls were bleak and chilling; the palette of colors in the sky was one gigantic smear, and the odors of the surrounding flowers, some heavy, others subtle, intoxicated Sima Ku, while the sometimes bitter and sometimes spicy grassy smells roused him from his inebriation. Heaven and earth both seemed so remote, eternity seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, thoughts that brought him profound anguish. Egg-laying locusts covered the gray footpath on the crest of the dike; they burrowed their soft abdomens in the hard, muddy ground, leaving the tops of their bodies sticking straight up, a scene of suffering and joy at the same time. Sima Ku squatted down, picked up one of the locusts. Studying its long, undulating, disjointed abdomen, he was reminded of his boyhood days and of his first love — a fair-skinned young woman with plucked eyebrows who was the mistress of his father, Sima Weng. How he had loved to rub his gristly nose against her breasts …
The village was just up ahead; kitchen smoke curled into the air, and the smell of humans grew heavy. He bent down to pick a wild chrysanthemum and breathe in its fragrance to clear his head of bygone images and put a stop to all fanciful thoughts. He then strode purposefully over to a newly opened breach in the southern wall of his family’s compound. A militiaman who had been hiding in the hole jumped out, cocked his rifle, and shouted, “Halt! Don’t come any closer!” “This is my house,” Sima Ku retorted coldly.
Momentarily stunned, the guard fired a shot into the air and screamed wildly, “It’s Sima Ku! Sima Ku is here!”
Sima Ku watched the militiaman run away, dragging his rifle behind him, and murmured, “What’s he running for? Really!”
Inhaling another whiff of the yellow flower and humming the anti-Japanese ditty the shepherd had sung, he was determined to make a dignified entrance. But the first step he took landed in thin air, and he tumbled into a hole that had been dug in front of the breach for the sole purpose of catching him. A squad of county policemen who were keeping watch day and night in the field beyond the wall quickly emerged from their hiding places. The black holes of dozens of rifle barrels were pointed at the trapped Sima Ku, whose feet had been cut by sharpened bamboo sticks. “What do you men think you’re doing?” he reviled them as he was racked by pain. “I came to give myself up, so why set a wild boar trap to catch me?”
The chief investigator reached down, pulled Sima Ku up to level ground, and snapped handcuffs on him.
“Release the members of the Shangguan family!” he bellowed. “I’m here to answer for my actions!”
9
To satisfy the demands of Northeast Gaomi residents, the public trial of Sima Ku was held in the square where he and Babbitt had shown their first open-air movie. Originally his family’s threshing ground, it contained a tamped-earth platform that now barely rose above the ground around it; it was the spot where Lu Liren had once led the masses in the land reform campaign. In preparation for the arrival of Sima Ku, district officials had sent armed militiamen to the spot the night before to dig up hundreds of square feet of dirt in order to rebuild the platform until it was as high as the Flood Dragon River dikes, and to dig a trench that ran in front and along the sides of the platform, which was then filled with oily green water. Once that was done, they authorized the expenditure of enough money to purchase a thousand catties of millet, which was then exchanged for two wagonloads of tightly woven, golden yellow matting from a marketplace ten miles out of town, with which they erected a huge tent over the platform, and then covered it with colorful sheets of paper on which were written a variety of slogans, some angry and others jubilant. The leftover matting was spread over the platform itself and its sloping sides, giving it the appearance of golden cascades. The district chief, in the company of the county head, came personally to inspect the interrogation site. Standing on the sleek, easy-on-the-feet platform, which rose like an opera stage, they gazed out at the roiling blue waters of the Flood Dragon River as it flowed east, a cold wind billowing their sleeves and pant legs until they took on the appearance of sausage links. The county head rubbed his red
nose as he turned to ask the district chief loudly, “Who’s responsible for this masterpiece?”
Unable to tell if the county head was being sarcastic or complimentary, the district chief replied ambiguously, “I was involved in the planning, but he was in charge of the work.” He pointed to an official from the District Propaganda Committee standing off to one side.
The county head glanced over at the beaming official and nodded. Then, lowering his voice, but not enough to keep the people behind him from hearing, he said, “This looks more like a coronation than a public trial!”
Inspector Yang hobbled up at that moment and bowed respectfully to the county head, who sized him up and said, “The county recognizes your outstanding service in arranging the capture of Sima Ku. But your scheme entailed the torture of members of the Shangguan family, for which you have been censured.”
“Bringing the murdering devil Sima Ku to justice is what counts,” Inspector Yang responded passionately, “and for that I’d have gladly given my good leg!”
The public trial was scheduled for the morning of the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. Residents cloaked in the cold glare of early-morning stars and capped by the chilly countenance of the moon began pouring into the site to be part of the excitement. By dawn the square was black with people, some of whom stood behind railings thrown up on the banks of the Flood Dragon River. When the sun made its shy appearance, casting its rays on the people’s frosty eyebrows and beards, pink mist rose from their mouths. Other people had lost sight of the fact that it was the morning when they normally ate bowls of fruity rice porridge, but not the members of my family. Mother tried to infect us with her feigned enthusiasm, but Sima Liang’s constant weeping had us in a foul mood. Like a little mother, Eighth Sister felt around for a sponge she’d picked up on the sandbar and dried Sima Liang’s copious tears. He wept without making a sound, which made it worse than if he’d been bawling loudly. First Sister stayed close by Mother, who was running around busily, and asked over and over, “Mother, if he dies, will I be expected to die with him?”